Social media provides an arena for discussion of a plethora of current events and topics, and social media discussion is especially engrained in television programs and events. Many television programs and events carried on various television channels promote themselves through social media tags or identifiers such as hashtag bugs. Typically, social media tags associated with a television program or event are displayed to a viewer as digital on-screen graphics. The social media tags are used to promote a backchannel of online discussion. Viewers can share their thoughts and opinions before, during, and after the broadcast of a program or event.
However, it is often inconvenient for the viewer to watch a television program while simultaneously keeping up to date with the latest social media posts or tweets about the program being viewed. In order to get the latest social media updates, a viewer generally has to redirect attention to a device other than the one being used to display the program, manually enter, at the other device, the social media tag presented on the display device, and then focus attention on the other device to read social media posts. This method of searching for and following relevant social media posts takes time and creates various problems for the viewer who would like to stay up to date with online discussion while also viewing a television program or event. The viewer is forced to open a social media website or application and manually enter social media tags displayed on the display device. This task can consume the viewer's focus as social media tags, such as hashtags, often have special non-standard spelling and can be quite long. Moreover, the viewer's attention is distracted from the display screen while the second screen is used for reading social media feeds. Therefore, it is desirable to improve upon methods and systems for discovering and following social media tags associated with a television program or event.
Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements.